The generated charts by www.heavens-above.com showed that they were the
Cosmos 660 rocket and the Okean O rocket 31 seconds behind and travelling
within a few degrees of each other.

I also coincidently caught this strange very slowly moving bright nebulosity
in NYC, grabbed my binoculars and followed it for a while. It had a central
stalk with curved forward sweeping wings on top and back sweeping curved
wings on the bottom. It also flashed at the top(?) end. I checked Heavens
Above and found 2 orbiting rockets that had close starting trajectories in
time and coordinates. I tracked the object through Draco near Etamin as you
indicated. I had noticed that the shape changed, now looking similar to a
fanning comet tail. It remained in the Draco head area and continues to
fade. Your report with the telescope through the eyepiece confirms that it
was two objects. I had taken my eye off it occasionally and has not seen it
split. That explains the change in shape.


"Lou" wrote in message
...
Here is what I observed tonight (8/31/04): Location: upstate NY 43° 14' N
75° 25' W I was leaving my parents house around 9pm, when I just happen to
look up and noticed a nebulous object in the wSW sky about 40-50degrees
up.
I quickly got out the telescope and WAS able to view it. (The telescope is
an 8" f/4 reflector, eyepiece used was a 25mm). Did not spend to much time
setting up the scope(has an equitorial mount so it should have been
alighned), just sent it on a semi level surface and looked for it, so I
cannot give you any sort of cooridinates. The object was in fact TWO
objects
moving quite rapidly(in my opinion) at first in relation to the stars. The
objects were moving in unison(and appeared to have quite a large distance
between them. In the eypiece if I placed the first object on the lower
edge
if the view, the second would be about 3/4's of the way up and slightly to
one side and the begingings of the tail would be about 9/10 up from the
bottom), and the tail trailed the second object and dissipated tward the
south. the objects were quite bright at first, and triled off in intensity
as the sighting went on. The appeard to be moving tward the area between
cassiopeia and pegasus. I was able to observe the objects in the telescope
for about 45 minutes before one was to faint to see (the one closest to
the
tail), and continued viewing the remaining one in till it to became to
fain
to observe somewhere around the constellation Draco's Etamin. (I could be
wrong on the constelations it was hard to tell) I wish I had a digital
camera setup for my scope to photograph it. The tail faided from view
about
30-40 minutes into the sighting, and the objects slowed significantly
(relative to the stars) as time passed. Any one have any thoughts on what
it
was??